New York City had a Vested Interest in Cotton
New York Times, Jan 22, 1861
Cotton and the Cotton Trade
The North American Review for the current quarter begins with an article headed as above. The history and statistics of this important staple are given in a brief but clear account, derived mainly from ELLISON's Handbook, the latest authority on the subject. It is, indeed, a wonderful history. No other product of human labor -- no other element in the commerce of the world -- has played so momentous a part. In less than a half century the manufacture of cotton has quadrupled the wealth and power of Great Britain. In the same short period its culture in the United States has changed the current of events and controlled our national politics. Among the causes which have conspired to bring our country to its present critical condition, cotton stands preeminent. The change which has taken place in Southern opinion and feeling as to the nature and tendencies of Slavery, and the entirely altered tone of Southern language on that theme, began with the rising prospects of cotton, and have kept pace with the progress of that great staple. Such a change very naturally awakened the jealousy and called forth the remonstrances of the North. The purposely irritating assaults of the Abolitionists, and even the milder comments of those who could not but condemn the institution, while they deprecated all interference with it, reacted on the Southern mind, and by a process perfectly natural, drove it still further in the wrong direction.
When our Constitution was adopted, cotton, as an article of field culture and of trade, was unknown to the country. What if the products and exports of the Slave States had continued the same as they were in 1787? Suppose their principal contributions to general commerce were still, as at that time, tobacco, rice, indigo and wax. Who imagines that under such conditions the South would ever have stood where she now stands? Who doubts that long before this the whole Northern tier of her States would have been far on the road to general emancipation and universal freedom? Or, that even the States which lie nearest the tropic would by this time have been looking earnestly and hopefully forward to the day when they, too, should enjoy a like blessed deliverance? Most assuredly, the formidable attitude of the question which now confronts us, is due mainly to cotton. Other causes have had their share, and may have seemed more efficient. Motives of humanity, religious scruples, jealous feeling, personal and partisan ambition, sectional prejudice and sectional injustice, real or supposed, all these have mingled with more or less of influence in the process and have contributed to the combined result -- and yet, as efficient causes, have all been interior and subordinate to cotton, the primum mobile of the entire system.
Very probably the people of the Southern States have been quite unconscious of the gradual change which this great cotton interest has been effecting in their opinions and feelings in regard to the whole subject of Slavery. Yet none the less demonstrable, as we apprehend the matter, are the change and its cause. The vast importance attached by the cotton-raisers to their great staple has, for years, been a matter of common remark. In their view, it has seemed to surpass and overshadow any other interest, and all other interests of the country. And, at this moment, is it not evident that all their fine air-castles of future sovereignty, trade, wealth and alliances, are built on imaginary cotton bales? Would they venture, or threaten to venture, on an enterprise so perilous, did they not hope and expect that, somehow, their cotton is to carry them through it? The Southern cotton crops have become, they tell us, so essential to the world that, rather than forego the use, slavery-hating England, herself, will eagerly join hands with the great Slave-trading Confederacy.
Should the menaces which now load every breeze from the Sunny South, prove more than empty threat, the cotton question will soon become the great question of the day. Our as yet confident belief is, that the dreadful issues of rebellion and revolution, of devastation and carnage, will be averted. As coming events shall cast their frightful shadow before, let us hope that the conservatism of the South will rise in its might, and that thousands of deluded Secessionists will pause and draw back from the abyss towards which they are now rushing. Heaven, in mercy, grant it! But suppose it is to be otherwise -- suppose disruption to ensue, with or without war -- is cotton still to rule? That a state of war, so long as it should last, would be all but fatal to the cotton-planters, is very certain. But suppose -- impossible though it be -- suppose secession peaceably effected, is the monarch's throne perfectly secure?
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We have lately had occasion to demonstrate the utter powerlessness of King Cotton in an hour of trial like the present, and the essential weakness of every community, which, like the South, cultivates but one thing, and that a raw material, which they cannot convert into useful forms. If they would become truly prosperous and independent, our Southern brethren must diversify their agriculture and raise something to eat as well as something to wear. But there are other aspects of this great cotton question, destined soon to arrest universal attention, and which must deeply interest both the cotton-growers of the South and the cotton-traders of the North.
How earnestly England has endeavored to free herself from dependence on our cotton planters is well known. Wherever in Asia or in Africa cotton is raised or can be raised, she has lent her aid to increase and improve its culture. True, she has met with many difficulties. The costly experiments made in India, with imported seed, and under the supervision of experienced planters obtained from our Southern States, though not wholly unsuccessful, fell a good way short of their expected results. Both in quantity and quality, American cotton had an advantage, which it seemed likely to keep. This partial failure of British experimentation, has contributed largely to the overweening confidence of Southern planters in the cotton power.
But the English people are not easily diverted from any purpose which they have deliberately formed. If we are to have a Southern Confederacy, based on the cotton-trade, it may be well for its members to know, definitely, what are the prospects as well as purposes of their greatest customer in reference to this very important article. As to her purpose, there can be little doubt. If her hate of Slavery makes her even now reluctant to buy of us, would she be less reluctant to purchase of a nation wholly given over to an institution which she abhors? Nay, it is certain, if anything in the future is certain, that she would redouble her efforts to emancipate herself from all dependence on the Southern cotton-fields.
To what extent she has the prospect of such emancipation may be learned, in part, from the following facts. Apart from America, it is evident that India must be her main dependence for those supplies of the raw material which have become absolutely necessary to feed her thirty millions of spindles. In this vast outlying province of the British Empire cotton has always been raised in very great quantities. It may surprise some to be told that its present annual produce exceeds four millions of bales. As the average Indian bale is about 50 pounds less than the American, so much allowance must be made, when comparing the crop of India with our own. In respect of quality, the difference is still greater. The Indian cotton is short in the staple, and is apt to be in bad condition when it reaches the market. To a certain extent, this inferiority may be ascribed to peculiarities of the soil and climate. Irrigation and manuring will do much to improve the quality as well as to increase the product. Col. GRANT states, as the result of of his own experience and observation:
"Nothing appears more susceptible of improvement from culture and a regular supply of water than cotton. In fact, the cotton of the common field and that of the irrigated bed cannot be recognized as the same plant. Not only do the shrubs attain to an increased size, and bear more numerous pods, but each pod is much larger, and contains a much greater quantity of fibre."
Old works for irrigation have recently been repaired, and new canals for the same object have been made, producing a wonderful change and rich returns:
"In 1857 a joint stock company was formed in London to construct a canal for navigation and irrigation, through Madras, Berar and Mysore, and another from the Malabar to the Coromandel coast, which will open four hundred thousand square miles of cotton-growing land, -- a much larger area than is now devoted to cotton in the United States."
Hitherto, difficulty of transportation has seemed to he an insuperable obstacle to the increase and improvement of the East Indian cotton trade. Over many hundreds of miles inland, it is conveyed some eight or ten miles a day on the backs of bullocks to the nearest water, and thence by boats to the place of shipment. Imperfectly cleaned at first, saturated with water on the way, torn and stained, often with sand or stones inserted to conceal waste or depredation, the bales reach the end of their long, slow journey. To meet these evils, as well as to add security to those remote possessions, a system of railways, more than two thousand miles in extent, is now in rapid progress.
Another obstacle to the raising of cotton in India, and probably the greatest of all, has resulted from the tenure of the soil, and an iniquitous system under which half or two-thirds of the crop go for rent and taxes. Since the country passed to the Crown, surveys have been ordered, with the design of bringing the land of India under a system of rent which shall be just and fair. When this is accomplished, it will increase immensely the resources and wealth of that populous country. Let it be remembered, now, that the steady energy and boundless wealth of the United Kingdom are pledged to the prosecution of these great improvements -- that she is carying them on at an expenditure of twenty-five millions of dollars a year -- that she has a hundred and sixty millions of subjects to do her work -- and that she is resolved, if the thing he possible, to raise her own cotton, -- and we may see some reason to question the long-continued supremacy of our great Southern king.
Twelve years ago, Europe received, annually, from the East Indies, less than two hundred thousand bales of cotton. In 1857, the supply from that source had reached nearly seven hundred thousand hales. This large ratio of increase will, undoubtedly, be vastly augmented under the stimulus and the facilities soon to be furnished. In the words of the reviewer:
"It is safe to predict that in five years more the produce shipped from India will surprise the world. Were the export of Cotton from the United States to be arrested for two years, by a resolution or by adverse seasons, there is reason to believe that India might he made to yield from her vast resources, nearly two millions of bales per annum to England."
But it is not to Hindostan alone that England looks for those supplies of Cotton which are to make her independent of the American planter. Cotton of superior quality is raised on the banks of the Nile. In 1855, Egypt contributed 251,000 bales to the European market, and this amount may be a good deal increased, when the immense dams now in progress, under scientific engineers, shall add fifteen feet in height to the annual inundation. In 1857, a Company called the Cotton Supply Association was formed in England, and funds were raised to carry out its objects. In less than a year this Society had sent nearly 6,000 bushels of superior cotton-seed to the Coasts of Asia and Africa, and to the shores of the Levant. Many hundreds of cotton-gins have been sent from England to the Western Coast of Africa, whence they find their way into the cotton-raising countries of the interior. In the Yarriba country, which lies between the Niger and the Atlantic, largo quantities of cotton are raised for the market, and a superior article is sold for three to four cents per pound, with a handsome profit to the planter. Over the whole of the fertile and well-watered region of Sousan, stretching from the sources of the Niger to those of the Nile, with the Great Desert on the north and the mountains of the Moon below, cotton is known to grow spontaneously, and is formed into cloth by the negro women. And England, we are told, "is using every effort to divert the chiefs of this region from the Slave-trade to the culture of cotton. With the one hand she invites them to produce and sell the raw material, and with the other to receive the fabrics of her varied manufacture."
Nor is this all. Every scientific, every missionary explorer who leaves England to penetrate the African interior must go, like Ceres, with his pockets full of seed. LIVINGSTON, in his steam-launch, pushing up the Zambezi; BURTON and SPEKE in the heart of Ethiopia; and BARKIS on the Niger, take with them the cotton-gin and cotton seed. But enough for the present. We have pointed out a few of the omens which should comfort those who fear that some convulsion at the South is about to stop all the looms and spindles. How those omens should be regarded by Southern augurs is for them to determine.